


FLOWERSHOP

by omolo



Category: Persona 5
Genre: First Kiss, Flowers, Friendship/Love, M/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 16:59:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16559672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omolo/pseuds/omolo
Summary: A sanctuary. A secret in plain view.





	FLOWERSHOP

**Author's Note:**

> prompt & inspiration from emmy/shaburdies art ❤︎
> 
> https://twitter.com/shaburdies/status/1035021735769325569

There's a lily blooming over the boy's chest, a black flower pressed into a white shirt. It's singular in its inkiness and stark against the bright petals that fill the shop from wall to wall like tropical down padding the interior of a cubic pillow.

There isn't much space to stand in so they inevitably do so together, Akira with hands folded neatly over his apron and Yusuke with his sketchbook bared, equal parts poise and agitation as he channels a sudden bout of inspiration into his 'brush'. (A pencil blunted by his enthusiasm, as it were.)

"Not much of a garden, but I like it here," Akira says, wondering what had drawn the Kosei student to the underside of Shibuya in the first place. The artist's pockets were usually too empty to afford public transportation, much less any of the wares offered by the stalls lining the walkway.

Yusuke pauses in his ministrations to observe a nearby cluster of hydrangeas, committing the colors and contours of the seasonal pick to memory.

"Fresh-cut flowers hold their own charm," he assures Akira. "There's something to be found in arrangement and order—in the fleeting yet steadfast beauty of these perennials." He taps his drawing utensil thoughtfully against his bottom lip, before rendering more graphite onto paper.

"Indeed, this establishment itself is rather like a sanctuary from the chaos of the city. Wouldn't you agree?"

Akira agrees, soundlessly, as he watches him at work, his own gaze skimming the industrious angles of Yusuke's slim fingers and the attentive slant of his long lashes.

He forgets to ask why he visited, and Yusuke likewise forgets to explain.

There's a black lily blooming over the boy's chest, and whenever Akira sees it his own pulse echoes strangely between his ribs.

  _A sanctuary,_  he muses. A secret in plain view.

///

The flower shop stays the same, and it changes, always crowded by plants, always tidy in presentation. Summer rolls onward, hot and humid. Yusuke returns with all the certainty and unpredictability of rain, frequently enough to eventually become another manicured stalk quietly gracing the humble storefront. 

Akira begins to send him off with flowers for his spartan dorm room. (Leftovers, he tells him, though it isn't entirely true.) 

He gives him piecemeal bouquets: irises and zinnias, and lilies too, of course. Flowers for elegance, mystery, friendship and affection. Blue on a rainy day, yellow for a warm and cloudless sky. Red when he is feeling daring.

Yusuke trades him his blooms for kernels of knowledge: the wisdom of indigo and saffron, paint and pigment, Bosschaert, Monet and Cassatt. He occasionally rambles about edible flora. Akira is happy to listen.

"You always seem to know just what's on my mind," his recipient remarks one afternoon, carefully spinning the delicate stem of a sweet pea between his fingertips.

"Part of the job," Akira says, burying his hands in his pockets.

///

"You're in love," says Ann. She has an idea who, and she smiles at Akira slyly, all sweetness behind her cheek.

He blinks at her, then down at his egregiously oversized parfait. He resolves to put another bite in his mouth—a veil of nonchalance overlying a vow of silence. So much for secrets in plain view.

"Well...?" She prompts him, undeterred and practically lilting off her seat in her anticipation. Akira passes her the rest of his dessert, expression carefully censored. 

"A bribe into secrecy?" Ann frowns, but it doesn't stop her from reaching across the table for the decadent treat with both hands. He relinquishes a quiet smile.

"Maybe."

"There's an adage in English, you know." She sits up ever straighter, blue eyes lighting up in their wonderful way, never failing to illuminate her delight. She waves her slim spoon in the air like an orchestral conductor her baton, or perhaps a fairy godmother her wish-granting wand.

" _Time waits for no one._ "

"And it won't wait for me," Akira finishes after a beat. "Rolling Stones."

She raps him lightly on the knuckles with an exasperated grin, before digging into his forfeited share. "You know what I mean."

He does. He thinks of fresh-cut flowers, of black lilies.

///

"You're still working here."

"You're still visiting."

Fall arrives, crisp and cool, and with it bellflowers, cosmos and chrysanthemums. Yusuke's presence garners gossip in the underground mall: he's a model, an eccentric, Madarame's former pupil. A pauper, a prince, a paramour.

"I do wish they'd stop following me," he says with a sigh, tucking a wayward strand of hair neatly behind one ear. Around the corner lurks an audible group of admirers, their collective, maidenly hope obvious in their poorly-hushed giggles.

Akira sympathizes well enough, though it hardly discourages him from his work. He hands Yusuke a bundle of flowers, colors as overt in intention as the voices trailing the young painter.

"Here. They'll think you have a date waiting. Probably."

The alternative, he supposes, would be a spare smokescreen, though that would surely result in mass panic and Morgana's grave disapproval.

His beneficiary is hesitant to accept his aid, and finally announces, quite unnecessarily, "I'm afraid I don't have any money."

"I know."

"...Do I return these later?"

"You can keep them."

_They're for you,_  Akira thinks to himself.

///

"There's someone on your mind," says Haru. She has an idea who, though it takes Yusuke several slow blinks to catch on himself.

"Sometimes, he'll give me flowers," he says offhandedly, eyes gazing past the dark surface of his coffee and into some uncharted plane of introspection.

—Whatever pensive thread strung between his knit brows is quickly broken when their next course arrives. Haru's invited her fellow phantom gourmet to taste a sample menu for a new line of Okumura family restaurants, and she stifles a giggle politely behind her hand to see him so verily distracted from their conversation and his own, budding revelations.

"He sounds like a proper gentleman," she says softly, steering him back to his scattered thoughts. Ignoring the small and wistful pang in the back of her heart, genuinely glad to help her friend gather the seeds of endearment strewn across his own.

Yusuke, meanwhile, wrangles a string of spaghetti onto his fork and a response into his mouth.

"Well. He's also a thief."

Haru laughs, and nods.

///

Winter. The world ends and begins anew. The flowers survive in their refuge below Shibuya. The artist visits the shop before close to share his latest painting.

It's a garden Akira's never seen before but recognizes, boasting every flower he's ever given Yusuke, dried or fresh-cut or somewhere in between. Irises and zinnias and poppies, peach and lilac and ivory. There are as well the flowers he's been "given" in return—indigo and lotus, saffron and peony. A frizzy-haired boy stands in the center of the four-cornered sanctuary, wreathed in florals, a suggestion of a smile on his lips.

A secret in plain view.

Akira drops a half-formed bouquet in his open surprise, and doesn't notice until they've hit the floor. He quickly crouches to retrieve them, murmuring an apology to no one in particular. Yusuke sets his canvas aside to join him, picking up and passing a few of the stems.

It's quiet.

There isn't much space to kneel in, and so they inevitably do so together, very closely. Close enough for Akira to count long lashes, to study slim fingers and to imagine a black lily blooming over a white shirt. Blooming under the palm of his hand.

It's Yusuke who speaks first this time, voice measured as always, his words a calm cadence over the thrum of Akira's heartbeat between his ears.

"It may not be much of a garden, but I quite like it here, too."

Akira nods, opens his mouth, and closes it again.

"...Perhaps I'm merely postulating, but is there something you wish to tell me?"

Another pause.

" _Time waits for no one,_ " Akira says.

" _Memento mori,_ " Yusuke answers sagely.

///

They kiss, and it is petal-soft like jasmine and orchid. Sweet like honeysuckle and gerbera, slow like spring yawning beneath a long winter. Perhaps a little clumsy—there isn't much space for finesse, either. Akira nearly abandons his light burden again to curl a hand gently into Yusuke's collar, youthful eagerness tempered only by the residual awareness of their public surroundings.

There's a distant patter of footsteps. An announcer's voice overhead. Train delayed, reality delayed, time suspended by lips on lips, cushioned by flowers.

Everything stops, and everything blooms.

///

Yusuke waits for him, painting wrapped up and tucked safely under an elbow. Akira hurries to join him, with gift in hand.

"They're for you," he says out loud.

He's feeling daring, and the roses are red.


End file.
